After viewing The Critic, one can only hope that Sir Ian McKellen (X-Men, Vicious) recovers fully from his recent unfortunate injury and somehow manages to become immortal. The film itself is a semi-noir, very British restrained, backstage theatre/journalism drama that McKellen easily upstages. With his craggy face framing eyes that slide seamlessly from wounded to icily vindictive, he relishes each witticism and makes us love an utterly loathsome character. McKellen plays a late 1930's theatre critic, Jimmy Erskine, for a right-leaning newspaper. His speciality is penning vivisections of "crimes against theatre," with actress Nina Lund (Gemma Atherton) a particular target. This becomes difficult when the paper's publisher dies, leaving the paper to his son, David Brooke (Mark Strong), who has an unrequited lust for Miss Lund. Brooke warns Erskine to "tone it down, the unpleasantness, the extravagance, the extremity of your style." Erskine coolly replies "That's why people read me."
Erskine revels in his power as a make-or-break critic and demands the perks, if not respect, that his position gives him. He is quite content living "like a king on a pauper's wage." He also needs the position to protect his lifestyle as a barely closeted gay man with a much younger, black, live-in 'secretary' Tom Turner (Alfred Enoch). Erskine gets caught cottaging, "he likes it rough," and when he and Turner are almost bashed by Blackshirts he quips, "He who lives in fear, dies in shame. Scribble that down for the memoirs." It is a dangerous way of life (and The Critic would have been much better if it spent more time showing how this shaped Erskine into the vitriolic man he is) and Brooke's criticism of Erskine's writing is barely coded homophobia. Like the Oscar Wilde Erskine admires—of a youthful "pilgrimage" to meet Wilde, Erskine laments "I wasn't pretty enough to catch his eye"—the public loves their gays as long as they don't frighten the horses or have sex.
Instead of toeing the line, Erskine decides to blackmail Brooke, "All men have secrets, I'll find his," and the plot is set in motion. What follows involves the aforementioned blackmail, plus suicide, murder and bon mot after bon mot about the glories of theatre and the fallibility of the press. Shot in muted neon or a sepia glow, very Masterpiece Theatre, the lushness conflicts with the noir overtones creating a delicate tension. Director Anand Tucker uses zoom outs effectively to convey inexorable doom, and the metaphor of water as life and death gets a workout, including glorious sequences of a nude McKellen in the bath with a toy sailboat as a stand-in erection. There is one final, delicious, twist that is lifted almost wholesale from another, wittier and more vicious, classic film about the theatre and the press. Alas naming the film would be a spoiler. The fun is in leisurely getting to that final twist.
Though McKellen dominates the proceedings, there is nice subtle work from the rest of the cast. Atherton excels as a the actress who Erskine chastises as "There is art in you Miss Lund. My disappointment is in your failure to access it." Acting badly is an art form of its own, and Atherton's onstage performances and rehearsals are gently mocking of thespians in general. But when Lund's morals are compromised, Lund turns in a stellar performance as horror and then resolution and realization creep across her face. And with encouragement from Erskine, she does turn in an almost powerful, at least competent, onstage performance, as well as a very duplicitous offstage one. Sadly, Enoch is mostly sidelined for plot purposes and, possibly, to fuel our curiosity about the intimate nature of his relationship with Erskine. Turner's role is apparently more supportive, mildly mercenary, than sexual, and Erskine treats him as more servant than partner. Strong, and a very easy on the eyes Ben Barnes, essay the heterosexual prey very nicely. And one wishes to see more of the also axed opera critic, a coded gay, longstanding crony of Erskine's who is, with casual regret, tossed under the speeding bus of retribution and mayhem.
There is a fascinating and disturbing disconnect between Erskine's frantic but very deliberate plotting to maintain his enviable position, and his emulation of Wilde both in manner of speech and dress. Wilde sacrificed all for his beliefs and his sexuality, while Erskine resorts to scheming and subversion, keeping himself removed in the false belief that he doesn't read as homosexual. We get no sense of community beyond a brief montage in an orgiastic club and the cottaging trade, and little sense of the hostility beyond the blackshirts and one brutal putdown. The contrast with the abundance of nostalgia for the days that theatre mattered, and the press actually had a vital role in politics and art, is jarring. The Critic is a thriller but a period drama is more intense with context beyond sumptuous settings, artful lighting and glancing glimpses of the underlying social milieu. Not that any of that prevents McKellen from chewing up the screen with glee. Of course McKellen arrives with his own context of being outspoken and magnificently militant when it comes to recent queer issues. He certainly understands, having been closeted for years, how blackmail and murder can seem eminently practical. That weary knowledge suffuses his performance, and the entire film, making the final twist of a betrayal all the more satisfying.
On a very personal level, The Critic resonated in an unusual way. While the fantasy of a critic living a glamorous and luxurious life earned guffaws, the question of how and when to utilize those nasty little zingers, no matter how deserved, lingered. Bitchy is easy. And fun. And mean. And watching McKellen gorge on it is imminently amusing and guilt-inducing. It took all my resolve not to start this review by lauding it as a mild extrapolation of a former fellow critic who will remain nameless. It would have been a great one-liner. The Critic is a potent reminder not to take oneself, or one's opinions or position, too seriously. Or to cling to imaginary power too tightly. Sooner or later we all wind up saggy and naked in a bathtub while plotting revenge. But very few of us get to do it with McKellen's style and queer joie de vivre.
RELATED ARTICLES / ARCHIVE: